Wild Salmon with Fresh Mango and Pepper Jam Relish - a.k.a. Salmon Mango Bango

What’s the best thing about being a chef? It’s being able to name your dishes anything you want! That’s right. If you invent it, you get to name it. So when I came up with this recipe I thought I would completely abuse that privilege and think of something really ridiculous. All kidding aside, mango and salmon are a great pairing. The exotic, tropical tang of the fruit and the richness of the wild salmon work wonderfully together. The “bango” comes from the spicy, sweet pepper jam I use to bind the fresh mango relish. This dish is also a great example of how just a few ingredients can produce big flavors.

Pepper jams are a wonderfully versatile products and every good cook’s pantry should stock several of them. Check your local market and I’ll bet you find a few varieties next to the regular fruit jams and jellies. Any specialty foods store will have many to choose from.

Also, wild salmon is really the only way to go for many, many reasons. I won’t give you a lecture here, but if you do a bit of research, you may never eat farmed again. Hopefully you have access to fresh wild salmon near you. If not, the frozen choices are actually quite good these days, and far superior to fresh farmed salmon in my opinion.